Gu
surname · Latin script
Meaning: Chinese from a word meaning ‘valley’
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/ˈɡu/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Gu is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country.
- USUnited States1 in 60K(measured from records)
- DEGermany≈1 in 172K
- FRFrance≈1 in 97Kas Gue
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Gu itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- China (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 331 (measured from records)
- 1 in 33K (inferred from the name graph)
≈13,000 named Gue, est.
Highest-authority source
Finland
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records, and ○ marks a model's transliteration; click a spelling to open its page.
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
Chinese from a word meaning ‘valley’. During the Zhou dynasty (1122-221 bc) there existed in the state of Qin a certain Viscount Fei Zi, a descendant of the legendary emperor Zhuan Xu of the 26th century bc. Viscount Fei Zi was granted the area Qin Valley, and his descendants later adopted the word gu ‘valley’, as their surname.
Sources 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Attested across 7 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Gu counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.
Sorted by bearers: national registers' counts, and Mondonomo's estimates (≈, est.) where no register counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CN China | — | ≈13,000 est. | ≈1 in 106K | — | Gu | 108 |
| US United States | — | 5,532 | 1 in 60K | 9.1K | Gu | 331 |
| CI Côte d’Ivoire | — | ≈3,900 est. | ≈1 in 7.1K | 3.1K | — | — |
| FR France | — | ≈700 est. | ≈1 in 97K | 79 | Gu | 165 |
| DE Germany | — | ≈470 est. | ≈1 in 172K | — | Gu | 80 |
| SE Sweden | — | 173 | 1 in 59K | 173 | — | 16 |
| FI Finland | — | 171 | 1 in 33K | 171 | — | 7 |
| NO Norway | — | 124 | 1 in 44K | 124 | — | 4 |
| AU Australia | #881 | ≈70 est. | ≈1 in 362K | — | Gu | 151 |
Exact figures are national registers' own counts, while figures marked ≈ and est. are Mondonomo’s estimates, counted from our sources and calibrated against those registers; hover one for how far to trust it in that country. A dash means neither exists.
Registers cited: Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; nomprenoms.ci — ranked Ivorian surname frequencies; INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population). Figures without a register are Mondonomo estimates; see Methodology.
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table (how that works).
Other recorded senses(measured from records)
Gu is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
from the name of the grandfather of the virtuous duke Wen Wang (1231-1135 bc), known as Gu Gong Tan Fu. The character for Gu, which also means ‘ancient’, was adopted by some of his descendants as a surname.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
from the place name Gu. Records of the this surname go back to the Xia dynasty (2205-1766 bc), when there existed a state called Gu. Much later, during the Spring and Autumn period (722-481 BC), there existed another state of Gu. Eventually, some descendants of the ruling class of both these areas adopted the place name as their surname.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In English, Initialism of general user.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Russian, 23 janvier (5 février), 9 (22) février, 23 mai (5 juin), 31 août (13 septembre). Génnade est son équivalent français. Fête : 25 mai.
as a nameRussian Names
In Russian, de gerontos, vieillard. Fêtes : 1 (14) avril, 28 août (10 septembre). Géronce est son équivalent français. Fête : 5 mai. 42
as a nameRussian Names
Ordered by how much of this spelling's record each language holds, so a sense from a language the name is barely used in sits last rather than first.
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Wellington Koob. 1888TWnot in their usual nameDiplomat and former President of the Republic of China
- Koo In-hwoib. 1907KRnot in their usual nameSouth Korean businessman; co-founder of LG Group (1907–1969)
- Joseph Koob. 1931CNnot in their usual nameHong Kong composer (1931–2023)
- Gu Changweib. 1957CNChinese film director (1957-)
- Louis Koob. 1970CNnot in their usual nameHong Kong actor and film producer (born 1970)
- Leo Kub. 1972CNnot in their usual nameHong Kong pop singer
- Koo Hye-sunb. 1984KRnot in their usual nameSouth Korean actress, director and singer
- Koo Ja-cheolb. 1989KRnot in their usual nameSouth Korean footballer
- Goo Harab. 1991KRnot in their usual nameSouth Korean pop singer (1991–2019)
- Eileen Gub. 2003USAmerican-born Chinese freestyle skier (born 2003)
The ten people covered by the most Wikipedia language editions — a proxy for cross-cultural notability, which favours historical and Western figures over equally prominent contemporary ones — shown by birth year. Source: Wikidata (CC0).
How to address them(machine-generated)
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 33 sources across 20 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 9.1K | #3,807 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 5.5K | #6,183 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 3.1K | #9,629 |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 173 | #4,701 |
| FI Finland | DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup) | — | 171 | #8,393 |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 124 | #12,606 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 4
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Gu mean, and where does it come from?
- Chinese from a word meaning ‘valley’. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- What are other forms of the name Gu?
- In the etymology graph, Gue is a form of the same name in other languages.
- How do you pronounce Gu?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈɡu/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Gu have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 13 thousand people named Gue in China, more than in any other country we hold.
- Where is Gu most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Gu is densest in Finland — about 1 in 33 thousand people — even though China holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Gu?
- In the United States, the national register counted 5,532 people named Gu in 2010, about 1 in 60 thousand residents.
- How common is Gu compared with other names?
- In Australia, Gu is the 881st most common surname of 552,428 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Gu?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/guThe payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. It takes a free API key (1,000 requests a day), which returns what this page shows everyone; the full country table, every register citation and the year-by-year series come with a licensed key, as does bulk access.
About this data
measured from records inferred from the name graph machine-generated
These figures come from the data snapshot of and will change as it is rebuilt.
Statistics are aggregated from the Mondonomo name corpus; related names and etymology are inferred from the name graph; pronunciation and any machine-marked transliterations are model-generated. Read how the numbers are made, including their known failure modes, and where the data comes from.
Reference works we consult — surname dictionaries, official name registers, Wikidata and Wiktionary — are named directly, beside the claims they support. The per-country source counts also include datasets of person records: we publish how many there are and their authority tier, but not their names.
Cite this page Mondonomo, “Gu” — the 881st most common surname in Australia. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.